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Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Jacob Jankowski is ninety – or maybe ninety-three; he’s lost count. He lives in a nursing home, where he is ‘scolded and herded and managed’, and all too frequently treated as a patient rather than a person. Then one day a circus comes to town, and the ghosts of Jacob’s past come ‘crashing and banging’ back.

It is 1931. He is twenty three, and close to finishing his final year of veterinary science at Cornell University. But he is overtaken by family tragedy, and in a moment of crisis, leaves university and jumps a train. This turns out to be a circus train carrying the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Jacob gets a job as vet and menagerie worker, and finds himself in a whole new world, part glamour and spangles, part deception and greed, and part friendship and love, but also hatred and murder. The story then moves between Jacob’s life in the circus, and his life in the nursing home. Both are told in the first person present tense, so it is as if he is living the past, rather than just remembering it.

Both plot and character development are adequate rather than inspired. Jacob’s adventures with the circus have an air of ripping yarns about them and at twenty-three he is a nice boy, caring, brave and passionate, but only as the story requires. At ninety-three he is feisty and pugnacious, also as the story requires, but life in the nursing home is something of a cliché. I couldn’t really distinguish the Jacob of twenty-three in the Jacob of ninety-three, though perhaps none of us would recognise ourselves in our youth. There is a twist to the story as set up in the prologue which is clever, but ultimately seems to me a bit pointless. One reviewer thought it a ‘terrific revelation’, but I thought Gruen was cheating a bit.

What makes the book memorable for me are the details Gruen has plucked from the rich history of the American circus in depression era America. She has obviously done her research meticulously, and writes convincingly about moving the circus from place to place, feeding and training the animals – especially Rosie the elephant – and putting on the show. The period photos of circus activities which accompany the circus chapters are wonderful vignettes of a time gone by. She also does a good job with the social and economic realities – the rigid distinction between workers and performers (which Jacob to some extent bridges), the collection of ‘freaks’, the illegal alcohol consumption during Prohibition, the practice of ‘redlighting’ (pushing unwanted workers off the moving train) and the ruthless attitude to what is deemed expedient – whether people or animals. Indeed the wanton cruelty of some of the circus staff to animals is made painfully clear.

It is not surprising that few people questioned this cruelty in 1931; it was a brutal time. Indeed the circus could perhaps be seen as a metaphor for depression era America. ‘The whole thing’s illusion, Jacob, and there’s nothing wrong with that,’ one character says. ‘It’s what people want from us. It’s what they expect.’ But the illusion is built on exploitation of people and animals, just as in those years the American dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was an illusion built on hardship. One resident of the nursing home claims he once carried ‘water for elephants’. Jacob says this is a lie, though how he knows this is not explained. It appears in fact that no one carries water for elephants: they drink so much they have to be led to water. From this it follows that carrying water for elephants would be a very difficult task. Perhaps in the title Gruen is making a point about the difficulty of sustaining an illusion. But if so, she certainly does not pursue it, and I may be seeing more than is intended. She does not, furthermore, raise the issue of whether making animals perform in circuses is itself cruel. Jacob at ninety-three is as excited by a circus as he was at twenty-three.

You can read more about Sara Gruen here. A film, Water for Elephants (2010), has been made based on the book (2006), and you can see a trailer for it here.

PS. I noticed a review in the London Review of Books that looked in some depth at the relationship which I discussed briefly in my previous post between the book, the TV series and the film of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. You can read it here.

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I have just finished reading this book and agree with your summary and views. For me too, the most interesting part of the book was the portrayal of circus life in Depression USA. It was indeed a brutal life. The vicious cruelty of animal manager August and murderous ruthlessness of circus owner ‘Uncle’ Al will remain with me for a long time, as will the terrible ‘redlighting’ of unwanted workers (ie throwing them off the train while it is moving, and in some cases over a trestle bridge – to their deaths).
The second strand of the plot, with the aged Jacob in a nursing home and second escape to join the circus, feels like a tacked-on device to relate the main story, which could be read as a romantic thriller set in a brutal environment. Perhaps Jacob is caged in/trapped as the animals were in the circus? After reading this, I have found myself wondering about the nature of the novel and the apparent requiremenents now for authors to use compound, complex structures which are often clunky in execution.
Lyn